Each year my best friend from college and his wife visit. We always try and get a fall deer hunt and spring turkey hunt in. They flew out with his newborn thursday night and him and I drove to the ranch early friday morning. After a slow morning hunt, where we just saw some young deer and I shot a pig driving to pick him up. We grabbed cameras and checked what was going on.




Throughout the summer and into fall we have had one buck who was consistently showing up in daylight. He was a deer surprisingly we had no apparent history with, was a regular at a very guest friendly blind, and to our best belief mature. All that set up for a perfect buck for one of our guests to go after.




Sure enough, he was still fairly active over the previous week and we planned to get him on the buck. We go to our blinds and at about 5pm I see a coyote crossing the clearing. I squeeze off a shot and watch him drop.




Within seconds I hear a shot from my friend and excitedly wait on the text. Sure enough he had the buck down within site! While I love to hunt, it is a better feeling getting those close to me on animals on the limited opportunities they may get. He was excited as ever and has a great deer to take home. Given that we had no history of the buck, curious to hear what y'all think his age might be so let me know in the comments below. We will be getting the lower jaw back in a few weeks.



We ended the night sitting together in the same blind he shot the deer out of and shot another coyote before getting to work cleaning the deer and prepping for the drive back after the saturday morning hunt.

That's good stuff right there. Congrats to all!

Hell of a deer, congrats!

I'd say he's at least a 4yo. Definitely mature

Congrats to you and your friend. That is a dandy. Looks like a good time was had by all. My guess on age would be
5 1/2.

Yeppers, good stuff!

We had him at 5.5 too. He usually ran around in a bachelor group that had a 1.5, 2.5, and a very big bodied 3.5 year old and he always stood out as a more mature animal, but there were some traits that I noticed in person that gave me a pause and thought he might be younger than I initially thought. This is the earliest I have been around a buck on the ground though in a long time, the last few years the bucks I shot have been in late November to December where there bodies are really exaggerated with rut characteristics, so it just took a bit of a mental reset. We will see what the jaw says but I'm not worried about it one bit and am super pumped for my friend.

Good stuff.

Great hunting and shooting all around! Congrats to you and your friend.